Laser Gun Wedding
by IndigoMoose
Summary: A fan's fix-it fic of the TV episode "Wedding of River Song." A new ending that satisfies the "prophecy" and answers the questions "Why a space suit?" and "Why get married?". River Song was supposed to kill the Doctor on the shores of Lake Silencio. Yet, she refused, and time cannot move forward. Fragments of history are colliding, and the Silents are watching patiently.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's note:** This story starts out very similar to the TV episode "Wedding of River Song". However, there are some key differences that pay off later in the story. *Spoiler alert* There will be no Teselecta.

* * *

The newspaper reported that the War of the Roses had entered its second year. Bullet trains zoomed about on elevated rails, weaving around skyscrapers and pyramids. London picnickers listened to radio reports about solar flares and warned their children to heed the signs that read, "Pterodactyls are Vermin. Do Not Feed." Charles Dickens was being interviewed on television about his new Christmas ghost special. Holy Roman Emperor Winston Churchill returned to Buckingham Senate riding atop his personal mammoth.

Churchill complained to his Silurian physician about his conference with Cleopatra in Gaul. However, his complaint didn't last long, he was soon distracted by the time.

"What time do you have, Malokeh?"

The lizard man checked his pocket-watch. "Two minutes past five, Caesar."

Winston Churchill pursed his lips. "It's always two minutes past five. Day or night, whenever I ask anyone, they answer two minutes past five. Why is that?"

"Because that is the time, Caesar."

"And the date. Always the 22nd of April. Does it not bother you?"

"The date and the time have never changed my responsibilities. Why should it start bothering me now?"

"I want to see the Soothsayer. Where is he?"

"In the tower. Where you threw him the last time."

Winston Churchill turned to his two Roman guards. "Get him!" he ordered.

The soothsayer was dragged into the great hall in chains. He was a ragged and hairy man, wearing a dingy tunic and sporty sandals with velcro straps. His toe-nails were well manicured and painted bright red. The soldiers forced the man to his knees before their leader.

"Leave us," the Emperor said. He tilted his head and began reciting, "Tick tock goes the clock, as the old song says." He looked at the tall grandfather clock, it read 5:02. "But they don't, do they? The clocks never tick. Something has happened to time." He looked at the man with the long hair and beard. "That's what you say. What you never _stop_ saying. All of history is happening at once. But what does that mean? What happened? Explain to me in terms that I can understand. What _happened_ to time?"

The soothsayer finally looked up from the floor. He answered, "A woman."

* * *

The Doctor, clean shaven and wearing a cowboy hat, walked up to a figure from the shadows in a dark, damaged room with a fire burning in a corner. Speaking at a fizzling monitor, he addressed it with cold tranquility, "Imagine you were dying. Imagine you were afraid and a long way from home and in terrible pain. Just when you thought it couldn't get worse, you looked up and saw the face of the devil himself..." the Doctor grinned, "Hello, Dalek."

The Dalek shouted out, but it was clear he was damaged and left behind. The Doctor removed the tank's lid and aimed his sonic screwdriver at the creature inside.

"Hush now," the Doctor said. "I need some information from your data core. Everything the Daleks know about the Silence!"

The creature obliged.

***[==+}***

The Doctor next arrived at a bar. He asked the barman for a Father Gideon Vandaleur.

"Who says he's here?" the barman scoffed.

Doctor brandished the eyestalk of a dismantled Dalek. The barman scurried off.

When Vandaleur joined the Doctor at a booth, he set aside his magazine, Knitting for Girls, and offered the former envoy to the Silence his condolences.

"Your what?" the monk in the eye-patch asked.

"You had one job to do, and you got the wrong pregnant woman."

Vandaleur shrugged. "They didn't excommunicate me. I'll have a new assignment soon enough."

"Could have been worse right? You could have gotten the wrong woman pregnant. Don't give me that look, you're a monk, not a eunuch. Or is there more than one way to be a headless monk?"

Father Gideon Valdaleur frowned. "You wouldn't go to such lengths to track me down just so you could mock me. Get to your point."

"The Silence... Tell me about them."

"Tell you what?"

"One thing. Just one. Their weakest link."

***[==+}***

With the Vandaleur's information, the Doctor tracked down Gantok. He sat across from the eye-patch wearing Viking in an arena playing live chess.

"The crowd are getting restless!" the Doctor said. "They know the Queen is your only legal move. Except you've already moved it 12 times, which means there are now over four million volts running through it."

The Viking glanced up at the crowd who yell for him to make a move. The Doctor spread his hands. "That's why they call it live chess. Even with the gauntlet you'll never make it to bishop four alive," he warned.

"I am a dead man. Unless you concede the game," Gantok said in a hoarse voice.

"But I'm winning."

"Name your price."

"Information."

"I work for the Silence. They would kill me."

"They're going to kill me too, very soon. I was just going to lie down and take it, but you know what? Before I go, I'd like to know why I have to die. And why she has to pull the trigger."

"Dorium Maldovar is the only one who can help you."

"Dorium's dead. The Monks beheaded him at Demons Run."

"I know. Concede the game, Doctor... and I'll take you to him."

The Doctor flicked over his king piece and the crowd groaned.

***[==+}***

Gantok brought the Doctor to the Seventh Transept, where the Headless Monks kept the heads of their patrons. The shelves are lined with skulls which do not stay still. The richest patrons have their heads preserved in boxes; Dorium was rather wealthy. Gantok tried to kill the Doctor in revenge for being beaten at chess. Unfortunately for him, he fell into a pit full of ravenous skulls.

The screams of the Viking woke Dorium. "Hello? Is someone there?" He sighed when he saw the Doctor. "Ah, Doctor! Thank God it's you. The Monks, they turned on me."

"Well...I'm afraid they rather did a bit.

"Give it to me straight, Doctor! How bad are my injuries?" The Doctor squirmed and bit his lip. Then Dorium burst out laughing, "Oh, your face!"

The Doctor asked about the Silence. Dorium explained that they were a religious order of great power and discretion. The sentinels of history, as they like to call themselves. The Silence knows the Doctor has a terrifying past, but they fear his future is worse.

"What's so dangerous about my future?" the Doctor wondered.

Dorium began to quote, "On the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the Eleventh, when no living creature could speak falsely, or fail to answer, a question will be asked. A question that must never, ever be answered."

The Doctored pulled a small notebook from his jacket and read, "Silence will fall when the question is asked..." "Silence must fall would be a better translation. The Silence are determined the question will never be answered. That the Doctor will never reach Trenzalore."

"I don't understand," said the Doctor. "What's it got to do with me?"

"Because they question is for you; the first question, the oldest question in the universe, hidden in plain sight." The Doctor was still puzzled. The blue-faced man smirked. "Would you like to know what it is?"

"Yes!"

"Are you sure? Very, very sure?"

The skulls on the shelves turned their hollow eye sockets towards the Doctor. He gulped. "Of course."

"Then I shall tell you. But on your own head be it," Dorium chuckled.

* * *

Winston Churchill leaned forward. "But what was the question?" he asked the soothsayer. "Why did it mean your death?"

"Suppose there was a man who knew a secret. A terrible, dangerous secret that must never be told. How would you erase that secret from the world? Destroy it forever, before it can be spoken?"

"If I had to, I'd destroy the man."

"And silence would fall. All the times I've heard those words, I never realized...it was my silence. My death. The Doctor will fall." The Doctor paused and looked around the room. "Why are we here?"

"This?! This is the Senate Room."

"But why did we leave your office?" the Doctor asked, noticing that his legs were no longer in shackles.

"Well, we wanted a stroll, didn't we?" Winston Churchill looked at the revolver in his hand with a bemused expression.

The Doctor said, "I think I've been running. Why do you have your revolver?"

"Well... You're dangerous company, Soothsayer," Churchill replied.

The Doctor looked at his left arm and saw a black line. He remembered making tick-marks as a sign of seeing one of the Silents. "Yes, I think I am," he murmered.

"Resume your story?" Churchill requested.

* * *

Taking Dorium's head with him, the Doctor was determined to continue his farewell tour. He may have had a date with destiny, but there was no rush.

"Why Lake Silencio? Why Utah?" the Doctor asked.

"It's a quiet place and a still point in time. Makes it easier to create a fixed point. And your death is a fixed point, Doctor. You can't run from this."

"Been running all my life. Why should I stop?"

"Because now you know what's at stake. Why your life ends."

"Not today," the Doctor insisted. As the Doctor dialed the phone to speak to an old and dear companion, Dorium queried him on what the value was in delaying. The Doctor rattled off ridiculous things he could do, then gleefully said into the phone, "Hello, it's me. Get him! Tell him, we're going out and it's all on me, except for the money and driving!" He put his hand over the receiver and spoke to the man with the blue face, "I've got a time machine, Dorium... it's all still going on. For me, it never stops. Liz the First is waiting in a glade to elope with me. I could help Rose Tyler with her homework, I could go on all of Jack's stag parties in one night."

"Time catches up with us all!"

"Well, it has never laid a glove on me!"

However, this show of bravado quickly crumbles when Kate Lethbridge-Stewart comes on the phone and tells him that his old friend the Brigadier is dead. The Doctor accepted that his time had come. He pulled four blue envelopes from the pocket of his tweed jacket.

"I suppose I'll need to come up with someone else to give this fourth invitation to..."


	2. Chapter 2

Churchill interrupted the Soothsayer's story. "Why would you do this?" he asked. "Of all the things you've told me, this I find hardest to believe. Why would you invite your friends to see your death?"

The Doctor answered, "I had to die. I didn't have to die alone." He thought back wistfully, "Amy and Rory. The last Centurion and the girl who waited. However dark it got, I'd turn around, and there they'd be. If it's time to go, remember what you're leaving. Remember the best. My friends have always been the best of me."

"And did you tell them this was going to happen?"

The Doctor looked at his arm. There were two more tally marks. "It would help if you didn't keep asking questions. We don't have much time."

"And this woman you spoke of, the reason it is always just after five on April 22nd, did you invite her?"

"Yes, she was there," the Doctor said. He thought back to the woman in a jean jacket relaxing on a large picnic blanket on the shores of Lake Silencio. Then he said enigmatically, "River Song came twice."

* * *

The Doctor went to Lake Silencio with Amy Pond, Rory Williams and River Song. They picnicked and drank a bottle of wine that Napoleon had thrown at him. An Apollo astronaut rose from the lake and the Doctor went to meet it. He ordered his companions to stay back and not interfere not matter what they saw. The Doctor stood before the astronaut, feeling a bit jumpy. "It's okay, I know it's you," the Doctor said in a soft voice. The astronaut's visor was lifted to reveal River Song, trapped in the suit by the Silence.

River Song was not always a Time Lady, she was born a human named Melody Pond. That was why the Silence needed the space suit, because they needed to ensure that she became a Time Lady. The space suit with so much alien tech helped a growing baby girl survive on alien worlds and through various experiments as she was transformed from human to a being with regenerative abilities. Years, possibly life-times, had passed under the surveillance of the Silence. However, each time Melody Pond escaped, for all the brainwashing and psychological manipulation they put her through, she failed to kill the Doctor. The Silence determined that they needed a strong trigger for their post-hypnotic suggestion: that Apollo space suit.

Standing on the shore of the lake, the Doctor said, "Well, then. Here we are at last."

River Song slowly lifted the gun to point it at the Doctor. "I can't stop it. I'm not in control."

"You're not supposed to stop it. This has to happen."

"Run!" River tearfully begged.

"I did run. Running brought me here."

"I tried to fight it, but I can't, it's too strong."

"I know. It's OK. This is where I die. This is a fixed point, this must happen, this always happens. Don't worry... You won't even remember this. Look over there." The Doctor nodded in the direction of his companions on the picnic blanket.

River looked over and sobbed, "That's me. How can I be there?"

"That's you from the future. Serving time for a murder you probably can't remember. My murder."

"Why would you do that? Make me watch?"

"So that you know this is inevitable. And you are forgiven. Always and completely forgiven."

River felt her arm shift slightly, arming the gun. "Please, my love. Please, please just run!"

"I can't."

"Time can be rewritten."

"Not those times… Don't you dare. Goodbye, River."

River shook her head and sobbed. The Doctor closed his eyes and threw open his arms, accepting his fate. There were five bursts that made him flinch, but he stayed standing. He was not dead. The Doctor opened his eyes and demanded to know what she had done. River smiled and coyly explained that she had drained her weapon systems.

"But this is fixed. This is a fixed point in time," the Doctor sputtered.

"Fixed points can be rewritten," River said.

"No, they can't, of course they can't, who told you?!" the Doctor raved. Suddenly, everything went white.

* * *

The Doctor stopped telling his story.

"Well? What happened?" Winston Churchill asked.

"Nothing," the Doctor answered.

"Nothing?" the Roman Emperor repeated.

The Soothsayer with red nail polish answered, "Nothing happened. And then it kept happening. Or, if you prefer, everything happened, at once, and it won't ever stop. Time is dying. It's going to be 5:02 in the afternoon for all eternity. A needle stuck on a record."

"A record? Good Lord, man, have you never heard of downloads?"

"Said Winston Churchill."

Churchill smelled something. He sniffed the air. "Gunsmoke. That's gunsmoke!" He noticed a gun in his hand. "I appear to have fired this." He turned to see the Doctor holding a pike.

"We seem to be defending ourselves," said the Doctor.

"I don't understand."

The Doctor explained, "The creatures that lead the Silence. Remarkable beings...they're memory-proof."

"But what does that mean?" Churchill asked as he and the Doctor backed out of the Senate Hall.

"You can't remember them. The moment you look away, you forget they were ever there." The Doctor checked his arm and saw four marks in total. "Don't panic. In small numbers, they're not too difficult." The Doctor changed his grip on the pike and saw that his right arm was covered in tally marks. The two men looked up slowly and discovered a troupe of Silents hanging from the ceiling like bats.

A cylindrical device was thrown into the room and rolled across the floor, beeping. The Doctor shouted Go and tried to make a run for it, but bumped into the much larger Churchill. The bomb went off; it was a flash-bang. Armed soldiers burst into the room. They heard a soldier should, "Go! Go! Keep the Silents in sight at all times, keep your eye drives active."

"Who the devil are you?! Identify yourselves!" Churchill demanded.

A red-haired woman wearing an eye-patch sauntered through the smoke. "Pond. Amelia Pond," she said.

The Doctor laughed and told Winston Churchill not to aim the gun at his friend. As she came close, the Doctor saw that her eye-patch was familiar, the same eye-patch as worn by everyone who worked with the Silents. "No! No, Amy, Amy," he said in a disappointed tone. "Why are you wearing that?"

Amelia Pond fired her fun and the Doctor fell unconscious.

The Doctor woke from the stun gun in Amelia Pond's office on a train travelling towards Area 52. He tried reasoning with her, hoping he could make Amelia Pond remember being Amy, remember the proper timeline. However, he abruptly stops babbling once he sees that the walls of her office are lined with drawings of their adventures and the paper weight he was fidgeting with is a model of the TARDIS. Thanks to the crack in the universe which Amy grew up next to, she can remember alternate timelines. Sadly, she doesn't remember them clearly.

"You look rubbish," Amy said.

"You look wonderful," the Doctor responded, tossing the model TARDIS at her.

"So do you," she said with a smirk. "But don't worry. We'll soon fix that." She held up a tweed jacket with shirt and bowtie. The Doctor hurried off to change.

As the Doctor was changing, Amy sat at her desk and quickly began to sketch.

The Doctor returned clean shaved and wearing his familiar outfit. His hair was still longer than it was in Amy's memories. "How do I look?" he asked.

"Cool."

"Really?!"

"Noooo."

"Cool office though. Why do you have an office?! Are you a special agent boss lady? Not sure about the eye patch."

"It's not an eye patch," Amelia explained. "Time's gone wrong. Some of us noticed. There's a whole team of us working on it... You'll see."

"And you've got an office on a train, that is so cool. Can I have an office? Never had an office before! Or a train. Or a train slash office."

Amelia rushed over and gave the Doctor a big hug. "God, I've missed you!"

"OK, hugging and missing now." The Doctor broke the hug. "Where's the Roman?"

"You mean Rory!" Amy said. "My husband Rory, yeah?" She held up a sketch of a man with a large nose and kind eyes. "That's him, isn't it? I've no idea, I can't find him. I love him very much, don't I?"

"Apparently."

"I have to keep doing this. I have to keep writing and drawing things. It's just so hard to keep remembering..."

"It's not your fault, time's gone wrong. Do you remember why?"

"The lakeside."

"Lake Silencio, Utah. I died."

"But then you didn't. I remember it twice, different ways."

"Two different versions of the same event, both happening in the same moment. Time split wide open. Now look at it." He pointed out the window. "All the history you can remember is happening all at once."

"Does it matter? I mean can't we just stay like this?"

"Time isn't just frozen. It's disintegrating. It will spread and spread and all of reality will simply fall apart."

In Area 52, inside the Pyramids of Giza, the Doctor and Amy walked past more than 100 captured Silents. The Doctor is given an eyepatch by Captain Williams. He explains that it is called an eye-drive, an external memory storage system to remember the Silents. The Silents are each kept separately in tanks filled with fluid to prevent them from using their electrical attacks. They click, buzz, and chatter upon seeing the Doctor. Captain Williams really doesn't like the way they are looking at him and ordered several guards to start checking the seals on every level of the pyramid. They arrived in the King's Chamber, where River Song was waiting for them.

* * *

 **Author's note:** Sorry for the exposition paragraph near the beginning of this section. This whole story is based on the assumption that the episode "Let's Kill Hitler" never happened. I'm in the middle of making a actual story about River, Kovarian, and the Silents. I just wanted a better answer to "why the space suit?" than "because it's cool".


	3. Chapter 3

The Doctor strolled into the King's Chamber of the Pyramid at Giza and called out, "Hi, honey. I'm home."

Dr. River Song turned around. "And what sort of time do you call this?" she asked. With the eye patch and the black suit, she looked like a younger version of Madam Kovarian.

Incidentaly, Madam Kovarian was there, too. She was bound to a chair. She sneered at the Doctor. "The death of time. The end of time. The end of us all. Oh, why couldn't you just die?" she groaned.

"Did me best, dear. I showed up," said the Doctor. He smugly strolled around the chamber. "You just can't get the psychopaths these days. Love what you've done with the pyramids. How did you swing all this?"

"Hallucinogenic lipstick," River answered. "Works wonders on President Kennedy. And Cleopatra was a real pushover."

"Didn't seem that way to me," the Doctor answered.

"She mentioned you."

"What did she say?"

"Put down that gun."

"Did you?"

River Song shrugged. "Eventually."

Madam Kovarian rolled her eyes. "They're flirting! Do I have to watch this?"

"It was such a basic mistake, wasn't it, Madame Kovarian? Take a child and give her a single goal in life: kill the Doctor. You made it my obsession, but you forgot something very important: hate requires passion. Who else did you expect me to fall in love with?"

"It's not funny, River. Reality is fatally compromised. Tell me you understand that."

River simply responded, "Dinner?"

"I don't have the time. Nobody has the time, because as long I'm alive, time is dying. Because of you, River."

"Because I refused to kill the man I love."

"Oh, you love me, do you? Oh, that's sweet of you!" The Doctor goes to take River's hand, but she knows they are opposite poles of an explosion waiting to destroy this timeline. For a brief moment they were back at the lakeside, and River was in the spacesuit. But then they were back in the King's chamber and all the digital clocks were reading 5:03. River demands that the Doctor be handcuffed.

"It's the only way. We're the opposite poles of the disruption," the Doctor said as the soldiers put him in handcuffs. "If we touch, we short out the differential, time can begin."

"And I'll be by a lakeside, killing you."

"And time won't fall apart. Reality will continue. There isn't another way," the Doctor insisted.

River replied, "I didn't say there was, sweetie."

The Silents, who had actually just been waiting for the right moment, began causing their tanks to crack. The soldiers who were busy checking the seals were puzzled by the gentle trickle of water coming down the stairs. In the King's chamber below, River and the Doctor continued to talk.

"There are so many theories about you and I, you know," River said.

"Idle gossip," the Doctor responded.

"Archaeology."

"Same thing." The Doctor struggled slightly against the guards that held him back.

River stepped quite close. "Am I the woman who marries you, or the woman who murders you?"

"Oh! I don't want to marry you," the Doctor said in a low voice.

"I don't want to murder you," River replied with sincerity.

"This is no fun at all."

"It isn't, is it?" River said with a mock pout.

Amy felt something drip on her head. When she looked up at the ceiling, she could see a line of water dripping down. When she called the Doctor's attention to it, he responded by asking how many Silents were trapped in the pyramid above.

Madam Kovarian spoke wryly, "None. They're not trapped, they never have been. They've been waiting for this, Doctor... For you."

Captain Rory Williams burst into the room and announced that all the Silents had escaped. Every fluid-filled tank was cracked and gushing. The soldiers tried to hold back the memory-proof aliens, but the aliens began electrocuting them. Gunfire had great effect, until the Silents began to electrify the eye-drives. One by one, each soldier with an eyepatch doubled over in pain.A thick plank of wood was placed horizontally across the doors to the King's Chamber. The Doctor, Amy, and River quickly struggled to remove their patches. Madam Kovarian mocked them by explaining that the Silents would never allow a true advantage. Then her eye drive started to spark, too.

The Doctor turned to River, "We could stop this right now, you and I. Amy, tell her!"

Amy instead said to the Doctor, "We've been working on something. Just let us show you."

"That's my point. There's nothing you can do. My time is up."

Amy protested, "We're doing this for you!"

"Then people are dying for me. I won't thank you for that, Amelia Pond."

River begged the Doctor to let them show him what they had been building. Amy asked Captain Williams how much time they had before the barricaded door would be breached.

"A couple of minutes," he answered.

"That's enough. We're going to the Receptor Room right at the top of the pyramid. I hope you're ready for a climb," River said excitedly. River lead the Doctor out of the room.

"I'll wait down here, ma'am," said Captain Williams, "buy you as much time as I can."

"You have to take your eye drive off."

"Can't do that, Ma'am. Might forget what's coming."

"But it could activate any second," Amelia warned.

Captain Rory Williams aimed his gun at the door. "It has activated, Ma'am. But I'm no use to you if I can't remember." His body shook with electricity and pain. "You have to go now, Ma'am."

"Yes. Yes, thank you, Captain Williams," Amelia Pond said.

The wooden beam holding the door splintered and the door flew open. Captain Rory fell to his knees as the Silents entered and began to electrocute him. Luckily, Amy, at last remembering who he was, returned to kill the aliens with a machine gun. She helped Rory to his feet and removed the eye-patch. She smiled at the man she recognized from her sketches.

Still bound to the chair, Madam Kovarian called out to Amy. Her eye-patch was partially off, and she looked very tired.

Amy walked over to the weakened woman. "You took my baby from me. And hurt her. You expected her to grow up without love or joy. And now she's an adult and she seems fine, but I'll never see my baby again. I'll always know that she was denied the loving parents that Rory and I wanted to be."

Madam Kovarian smiled. "But you'll still save me, though. Because he would, and you'd never do anything to disappoint your precious Doctor."

Rory called to her, "Ma'am, we have to go... now!"

"The Doctor is very precious to me, you're right. But do you know what else he is, Madame Kovarian? Not here." In a deft move, Amelia Pond forced the woman's eyepatch back on. The eye-drive reactivates. She leaned in close and said in a low voice, "River Song didn't get it all from you... sweetie."

Captain Rory was puzzled as Amelia Pond looped her arm through his. They left a screaming Madam Kovarian to join the Doctor and River. Amy suggested to Rory that they should get a drink when everything is over, and then married. Rory complacently agreed to both suggestions.

Atop the Great Pyramid, River had built a distress beacon. She explained, "I've been sending out a message, a distress call. Outside the bubble of our time, the universe is still turning, parallel universes are still moving forward, and I've sent a message: The Doctor is dying, please, please help."

The Doctor was frustrated. "What good does that do?"

"There must be a universe somewhere, where I don't kill you at Lake Silencio. If they could just tell me how –"

The Doctor interrupted, "That isn't how fixed points work. It's a point in time where all universes agree. Listen, the version of me that you are supposed to shoot, it's pretty old. I'm on my 13th self, in fact. You know what that means…"


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's note:** I didn't like how the "wedding" in the TV episode felt like it was appeasing fans. There was no good reason to get married. Here, the reason to get married is so the Doctor has a plausible mask as he gives clues to River under the watchful eye and ear of the Silents.

* * *

River shook her head. "I don't care if you are on your death bed begging me to shoot you out of mercy."

Amy and Rory joined them at the top of the pyramid. Amy reported, "We barricaded the door, we've got a few minutes…just tell him. Just tell him, River."

"Those reports of the sun spots and the solar flares. They're wrong, there aren't any. It's not the sun, it's you, the sky is full of a million, million voices, saying yes, of course we'll help." River's voice cracked, but she continued. "You've touched so many lives, saved so many people. Did you think, when your time came, you'd really have to do more than just ask? You've decided that the universe is better off without you, but the universe doesn't agree."

The Doctor looked at the ground, "A fixed point has been altered, time is disintegrating. No one can help that." "I can't let you die," River said simply.

Rory whispered to Amy, "I thought you said Time Lords regenerate. What's all this about?"

Amy told him to hush.

The Doctor sighed, trying to think. "River, you've researched me, haven't you?"

"The Silents made you my obsession, of course I researched you. Everything I could get my hands on."

"Do you recall a scientific article about my time in the Amazon?"

River blinked several times. "Doctor, I'm not sure I understand…"

The Doctor spoke barely above a whisper, "The Silents could be listening, I can't give you more explanation. Just think!" The Doctor stepped back and made a loud announcement, "Melody Pond, I believe we should get married. Amy, uncuff me, now."

"Married? But I thought…" Amy glanced at River, then went over and unlocked the handcuffs.

"I'm an old-fashioned Gallifreyan, Amelia. I want River to be my wife before she gets to see all of me."

River chuckled, "Oh, Doctor, we both know I've seen all of you."

The Doctor slowly began to undo his bowtie, "Are you sure? All of me? Head to toe?"

River's eyes suddenly grew wide with understanding.

The Doctor took a deep breath and held out the strip of cloth. "River, take one end of this, wrap it around your hand, and hold it out to me," he instructed.

They both wrapped an end of the tie around their hands. The Doctor took a deep breath, "Now, we're in the middle of a combat zone, so we'll have to do the quick version. Captain Williams, say "I consent and gladly give".

"To what?" the soldier asked.

"Just say it. Please."

"I consent and gladly give."

"Need you to say it too, mother of the bride."

Amy shrugged, "I consent and gladly give."

The Doctor nodded, "Good, we got the Anglo-Saxon part of the ceremony out of the way. Now for the Gallifreyan tradition." He looked at River Song solemnly. "Now, River, we shall whisper our birth names to each other in the language of the Time Lords. And once we are married, what's mine is yours and what's yours is mine."

River nodded, "Absolutely."

The Doctor smiled, "Right. We keep these names secret, understood?"

"Doctor, I don't have a name in the language of the Time Lords."

The Doctor smiled. "Then you may share a different secret."

The two leaned in and took turns whispering as Amy wished she could hear. They both stepped back, their eyes shining. The Doctor smiles, "Now there you go, River Song. Melody Pond, you're the woman who married me. And wife, I have a request. This world is dying, and it's my fault, and I can't bear it another day. Please, help me. There isn't another way."

"Then you may kiss the bride," River said.

"I'll make it a good one."

"You better."

They kissed and time began to move again. They were back on the shore of Lake Silencio. River shot the Doctor thrice, preventing his regeneration. Amy cried over his body. His body was engulfed in flames aboard a little boat set adrift on the lake. The distorted timeline vanished piece by piece.

Amy sat in her back yard at a table, a blanket wrapped about her shoulders. On the table stood a bottle of wine and two glasses. There was a flash of light and crackle of electricity, but it didn't phase Amy at all. Without turning around, Amy said, "Heard there was a freak meteor shower two miles away... So I got us a bottle."

"Thank you, dear," River Song said. She was wearing army fatigues and her curly hair was pulled by tight. She picked up the bottle and poured a glass.

"So, where are we?" Amy asked.

"I just climbed out of the Byzantium. You were there. So young," she took the chair next to her mother. "You didn't have a clue who I was... You're funny like that. Where are you?"

"We met President Nixon. We watched the moon landing on the telly…" She looked down at her glass. "The Doctor's dead," she said and took a sip of wine.

"How are you doing?"

"How do you think?"

"Well, I don't know unless you tell me."

Amy looked at some far away point. "I killed someone. Madame Kovarian, in cold blood."

"In an aborted time-line, in a world that never was..." River reminded her.

"Yeah, well, I can remember it, so it happened, so I did it. What does that make me now?" She didn't know what to do with her hands. "I need to talk to the Doctor, but I can't now, can I?"

"Of course you can. You watched him die at age 1103, then romped around in 1969 while he was still in his early ninehundreds."

"But, it's not the same. I want to tell him, warn him, but he was so insistent… like his death was unavoidable."

"Oh, mother... you'll see him again." She put a comforting hand on Amy's knee.

Amy shook her head. "It doesn't matter. Somewhere at sometime, someone in the universe will need him, and he won't come – won't be able to come. I don't know. Maybe I was selfish, but I kinda hoped my imaginary friend would live forever, you know?"

River Song gazed at her mother. She gave a small sigh. "OK. I'm going to tell you what I probably shouldn't. The secret I told the Doctor, and the story of how I got arrested."

Rory Williams was just coming home and taking off his messenger bag when he heard squeals coming from the back yard. He ran to the back door, only to find River and Amy dancing for joy. When she saw him, Amy rushed over to her husband and gave him a big hug saying, "He's not dead, he's not dead!"

"Are you sure, River? Are you really, properly sure?"

River grinned. "Of course I'm sure. I'm his wife!"

"Yes! And I'm his..." Amy's face suddenly soured as she said, "Mother-in-law."

"Father dear, I think Mummy might need another drink."

A figure in a hooded monk's robe carried Dorium's boxed head back to the Seventh Transept. Dorium demanded that his door be opened. When he could see the one who was carrying him, he recognized him as the Doctor. Who else would care to return him to his resting place? Dorium recognized the hooded figure as the Doctor and asked him how he escaped.

Atop the pyramid, in a collapsed time-line, the Doctor listened to River whisper, "Fire will disguise the regeneration energy."

As the little boat on the lake was engulfed by flame, the Doctor's body began to seep golden light. He kicked off his shoes and punched a hole in the bottom of the boat. He swam, the regeneration light still swirling, his burnt clothes breaking apart in the water. River Song waited at the bottom of the lake in the astronaut suit. She smiled as she saw the Doctor swimming towards her.

The funeral party had left the shore, making their way back to the small diner. They did not see Father Gideon Vandaleur and the Viking Gantok, disguised as American state patrol, approaching the lake. The two officers wore large sunglasses although the sun had nearly set.

"A Viking funeral, I see," said Gantok, noting the still burning boat in the distance. They waited on the shore patiently. A woman in a black swim-suit rose to the surface of the lake. Her usually curly hair was a wet, wavy mess. Yet, she walked with confidence towards Gantok and Vandaleur.

"Doctor River Song, we presume," said Father Gideon Vandaleur.

"I am. Are you here to arrest me for taking a sun-set swim?"

Gantok handed her a large towel. "We are here to arrest you for murder."

"I've done no such thing. I have been swimming in this lake all evening."

"Really? With that?" Vandaleur nodded his head towards the burning boat.

River Song laughed. "Oh, come now, we're all time-travelers here. Clearly, there's been a mistake."

At the bottom of the lake, the Doctor sat regenerating inside the Apollo spacesuit.

Dorium laughed. "Oh, that Impossible Astronaut! So you're going to do this, let them all think you're dead?"

"It's the only way. Then they can all forget me. I got too big, Dorium, too noisy...time to step back into the shadows."

"And Dr. Song? In prison all her days?"

"Her days, yes. Her nights... Well, that's between her and me, eh?"

"So many secrets, Doctor. I'll help you keep them, of course..."

"Well, you're not exactly going anywhere, are you?"

"But you're a fool nonetheless. It's all still waiting for you... the fields of Trenzalore, the fall of the Eleventh. And the question!"

The Doctor gave the blue head a mock salute, "Goodbye, Dorium." He turned at began to walk away.

Dorium hollered after him. "The first question! The question that must never be answered, hidden in plain sight. The question you've been running from all your life. Doctor who? Doctor who? DOC... TOR... WHO?!"


End file.
